He wore a cane and derby hat

[austin_dern]

So, then, bats. We've had some in the attic, and had a couple instances of them getting out of the attic and into the house proper, and that's enough of that. We finally got a guy in to figure out what bat-exclusion is going to require.

Happily, it shouldn't take much. As best he can figure there are probably only one or two bats living in the attic, a handful of males, rather than a maternal colony that would be a lot of creatures to deal with. And the exclusion looks to require mostly the sealing over of one hole, a spot where squirrels got in years ago, and then some caulking along the front and back of the house. They'll be coming around to do that in the next couple weeks; since they don't need to get into the house for anything they figure they don't even need to make an appointment, really, just show up and do the work.

So that's at least one more bit of general home repair work filed away.

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Meanwhile my mathematics blog has been going on, and it's got a bunch of posts that I've mentioned and numbered as they went up, but which I want to collect here because that does help people notice them. Mathematics posts since the last roundup include:

• Letting The Computer Do The Hard Work, about the problem of programming a symbolic integration package.
• The Geometry of Thermodynamics (Part 2), reblogging a neat bit of thermodynamics history.
• A Forest of 240 Factor Trees, a mild self-indulgence from the Find The Factors site.
• Reading The Comics, September 24, 2014: Explained In Class Edition, which let me mention Robert Benchley's Principle, which you ought to know about because it's very handy.
• Reading the Comics, September 28, 2014: Punning On A Sunday Edition, because Comic Strip Master Command decided everybody had to do something mathematically-themed all at once.
• My Math Blog Statistics, September 2014, reviewing how all that went back in September.
• How weird is it that three pairs of same-market teams made the playoffs this year? which reblogs a calculation of this baseball season's postseason coincidence.

Trivia: Paul Terry's cartoon studio created the character Kiko the Kangaroo following a discussion with Roger Ferri, editor of the 20th Century Fox house organ, who thought a kangaroo would be a great character. Source: Of Mice And Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons, Leonard Maltin.

Currently Reading: New Jersey: A History of the Garden State, Editors Maxine N Lurie, Richard Veit.

Comments

[moxie_man]

"...really, just show up and do the work"

Provided the bats are "not home" when the contractor seals your house.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Excellent chance they won't be, really; there's very little evidence that they're still in permanent residence.

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

They are installing a one-way door. It'd be illegal to just seal the bats in and no reputable outfit would do it!

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

And the door's in place now! The bat folks came over and did their sealing-up.